Aspen Avionics has issued a mandatory service bulletin identifying how to avoid issues with the repeated inflight system resets recently noted in an FAA Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin (SAIB). As previously reported by AVweb, the resets are occurring in a small number of Aspen Evolution EFD1000 Primary Flight Display (PFD), EFD1000 Multi-Function Display (MFD) and EFD500 MFD units with software version 2.9 and the ADS-B In (FIS-B) Weather Interface option installed. For ADS-B enabled units running version 2.9, Aspen says disabling ADS-B input will prevent the resets from occurring until a more permanent fix can be developed.
“The condition is apparently caused by unexpected/malformed data being transmitted from some FIS-B ground stations that is not rejected by the EFD1000/500 system,” the company said. “Since it is caused by the data content of the specific ground station you are near, not all aircraft are affected equally.” Aspen told AVweb that they have received fewer than 15 reports of display reset incidents, and that the occurrences were “geographically isolated” to the southwestern U.S. The company also stated that they have not had any additional reports since the SAIB was published. They are working on a software upgrade to address the issue.
No action is required and no display reset issues have been reported for EFD1000 and EFD500 systems that do not have software version 2.9 installed and ADS-B IN enabled. The service bulletin was distributed to Aspen owners and dealers last week.
